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Irony Through Psychoanalysis

Author(s) : Giorgio Sacerdoti

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The title of this book, Irony Through Psychoanalysis, reveals its double register in which the psychoanalysis and irony are respectively the object and the means (or the viewpoint) or vice versa. Thus, the first chapter reviews the modern concepts of irony through the psychoanalytic lens, whilst the two central chapters examine clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theorization from the perspective of irony.

Making extensive use of detailed personal material, Chapter Two looks at how the concept of irony might be broadened to include preconscious and unconscious aspects, and how we might speak of latent irony, even in those who are emitting the message. This contrasts with the position of Freud as a student of irony, who claimed that irony does not require involving the unconscious. It corresponds, however, much more closely to Freud's position as ironist, which is examined in Chapters Three and Four. Chapter Four in particular also traces back the reasons why Freud (with the exception of his article on humour) did not return to his work begun with Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.

Another of the book's aims is to make analysts more aware of the usefulness of the possibilities of perceiving the analsand's and the analyst's own ironic messages, especially the preconscious ones.